Month: December 2015

Quote For The Day 12-30-2015

“Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn’t we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it’s as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can’t explain his to us, and we can’t explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication … and there is the real illness.”
― Philip K. Dick

by

An Unorthodox Belief in Faith

Response to the Daily Post question about faith.

Un/Faithful

 

I don’t have any strictly organized faith. This was not the fault of my parents. They went to church regularly, taking my sister and me regardless of our preferences. It wasn’t until we got into High School that we were allowed to choose two Sundays a month to skip Church. I think my parents expected us to inhale the whole of religion from Sunday School, Church and Youth Group. Obviously, I didn’t. Yes, I know the stories and basics but, being the literal person I am, I’ve always had a hard time with the strict concepts of faith.

My parents never talked about their beliefs. I saw my father praying in church but never understood what prayer meant to him because he never told me. Did he believe strictly along denominational lines or did his faith veer off somewhere along the way, taking in the bits and pieces which made sense to him and leaving the rest?

If I believe Jesus is the son of god, do I then need to believe each and every word written about him? If I believe in the story of Noah’s Ark, how do I mesh that with the scientific history of the world?

History is written by the victors. So how do I balance that with a word-for-word belief in the Bible? The Disciples were starting a ‘new’ religion. Can you tell me without a shadow of a doubt that none of them ever embellished a story?

The Disciples were actually just revising a religion. The idea of one God wasn’t new, just some of the building blocks of the Bible are differ from those which came before. Or maybe not. Comparative Religion was never a serious interest for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of religion. It plays a large role in several of the manuscripts piling up on my bookcase. I just don’t believe organized religion works well in the real world. Too many years of Victors rewriting history to champion their cause.

And that certainly does not mean I don’t believe. I believe all the gods in all the religions are one. I believe we are all one. The ‘god’ is in us and is us. I don’t need the four walls of a building to celebrate the beauty and glory of the God within us all. All I need is a beautiful sunset or the quiet call of the whip-or-will to remind me of the real truth of God. Those things are worth more than all the Sunday’s of my life spent inside four walls, worshiping like I’d been taught, not how I really believe.

by

Writing Challenge 101 Day 4 – The Serial Killer (Loss)

Reblogged from June 9, 2014

A Writer's Life

Everything I learned about being a mother I learned from my mother.  Simple, right?  Of course I learned from her.  But it’s not so simple as that.  I was the baby of the family, the introvert, the dreamer.  The nonconformist.  I lived inside my head, inside the stories I was always telling myself, understanding those stories and their characters better than I could ever understand the real world around me. My mother was just the opposite; she lived in the real world and had no use for the daydreams and fantasies of her youngest child.

I always thought this was the reason we so often clashed.  Now, however, I think we weren’t so different after all.  She had to live in a reality that I had not yet known.  She had a husband and kids and a house to run.  Groceries to buy, food to cook and endless cleaning of house and…

View original post 435 more words

by

Writing Prompt – Unexpected Guests

Unexpected Guests

You walk into your home to find a couple you don’t know sitting in your living room, eating a slice of cake. Tell us what happens next….

“Ah-hum,” was all I said upon seeing the strange man and woman sitting in my living room, lights out, faces lit by the glow of hundreds of candles. A cake -looking very much like a birthday cake – sat on the end table between them. Both were eating slices of the cake. Chocolate cake with strawberry filling. I could tell by the smell. It was my favorite, the cake my mother always baked for my birthday.

I raised both hands in surprise, brain gradually restarting. “What the heck are you doing in my living room? And why are you fixing to burn it to the ground?”

“Oh, darling,” the woman laughed, dismissing my concerns with a wave of her hand. “We aren’t planning to burn down your house.  This is a lovely little room and a lovely house.”

I couldn’t focus on the appraisal of my room and house at the moment.

“Then why all the candles?”  Had some B-movie cast set up in my living to shoot some kind of witch’s coven scene?

“Darling, hardly,” the woman said with less humor than before. “A coven? You’ve been watching too many late night movies.”

I couldn’t deny the accusation. Insomnia was my friend – of sorts. I spent a lot of late nights watching bad movies. Tonight, I was actually tired and had planned to get a full night’s sleep, which explained why I was a little more than irritated at the disruption.

“Then…. who are you and why are you in my living room?”

The man put down his plate and rose. “You are thirty-one today, son.”

He was right.  It was my 31st birthday. I’d forgotten. But what….. and why did he know? And why did he call me son? I should have picked up on that first but, as I said, I was actually tired.

“Look,” I said conciliatory, “I don’t know who your are or why you are here and I don’t care. I don’t want some weird birthday party. I don’t want cake or cookies or ice cream. Or presents.” A little niggle in my brain was telling me they were here for a reason. “I just want to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

The woman rose gracefully to stand beside the man. “Do you ever wonder why, as you’re grown, you’ve had such a hard time sleeping? How you sleep less and less as the years go by?”

“Well. sometimes but…” I rubbed my temples. I’d had this headache for a year now. The Doctor’s couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me or any medicine to make it go away.

“Because,” she said with a soft smile, “You don’t belong here. Your body is remembering and wanting to go home.”

“What?” I winced at the ratcheting pain in my head. “Look I just want to go to bed, get some sleep, so I can go to work in the morning.”

“You don’t have work anymore,” the man told me, “at least not the same work.”

“What?” Maybe this was some sort of nightmare.

“Not a nightmare, darling. Look out your window.”

A practical joke? Did I know anyone who’d play such a joke on me?

“Look, I don’t want…” But my eyes slid to the window and everything stopped. It was pitch black beyond the glow of the candles.

Pitch black?  But how……

Hurrying to the window I looked out, surprised to see it wasn’t pitch black, just darker than I had ever seen. That, however, was not what drew my attention. Where were my neighbor’s houses? The road?  The street lights? Was did it look as if my house was surrounded by a forest?

The moon peeked out from behind the clouds, covering my yard with it’s soft light. Something drifted down from the sky, rain, I guess. But….

My yard was white. White? And the things drifting down, harder now, weren’t raindrops but snowflakes. In Florida?

I felt the man’s hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You’re home now. Your mother and I will explain everything.”

They led me to a chair and helped me sit, settling back in their seats. For a moment, we were silent; me in panicked confusion, them with understanding on their faces.

“It’s always confusing, darling,” the woman assured me with a pat to my hand.

“Once,” my father started before I could comment, “long, long ago, in a land called Faire……”

 

 

 

 

by

My Mother’s Shoes

Reblogged from March 2015

A Writer's Life

One thing often forgotten in the confusion of a family death is the afterwards. The drawers and closets of socks and sweaters and shirts. Pants.  Dresses.  Purses. Hidden letters.  Trinkets bought and tucked away. And shoes.

I’d never thought about all these little pieces of my Mother’s life.  The shoes she worn and loved.  What did they mean to her?  Which were her favorites?  The ones she only tolerated? White Keds.  Black pumps. Soft suede casuals.  And what about the broken ones left abandoned on the closet floor?  Why did she keep them?  What did they mean to her that she didn’t throw them away.

She was a tosser, opposite to my Father, the Yankee.  If you didn’t need it, don’t keep it.  If it’s broken.  Toss.  How many of my cherished toys broke and vanished? But back to shoes.

My Father asked my sister and I to go through…

View original post 378 more words

by

Young At Heart Writing Response

In response to the post Young At Heart:

How do I stay young at heart? It’s a struggle sometimes. We all face this same struggle. When we are young in age and heart, we feel invincible; death isn’t even in our scope of knowledge. As I aged into my thirties, however, I could see there would be an end, even if it wasn’t real, and the knowledge terrified me. It hung before me like a flat black hole with only the unknown beyond. How can you imagine not existing? I couldn’t.

I believe death is not the end, that we can neither be created nor destroyed, but it is hard holding to such a belief when emptiness looms somewhere before of me. I had so much to lose. I now see the finality of my end. Still scary, but no longer terrifying. I didn’t come to terms with death until my Mother died. I’d lived with the fear of losing her and now I had. I didn’t need to be afraid any more. I’d lost her but still had her in a much larger universe than just the physical.

Seeing the end like a dark tunnel extending somewhere unknown is freeing. I am no longer afraid. My Mother is waiting for me there and she still remains in the now, in my heart. I know that I will be free, not only from this physical, older, body but also from the struggles of being bi-polar.

I live in the moment as much as I am able. I won’t lie. I’m certainly not perfect and I don’t live in every moment. Sometimes I just exist until I turn things around. I collected model horses when I was child and I still collect them. They bring me joy, remind me of many happy times in my past and those to come in the future.  I read as much as I want. I’m not afraid to take a day off from work. I’m not afraid to let the necessary chores wait so I can  just daydream. And write. I work in my flower gardens, feeling the cool richness of the soil in my bare hands. I go to movies by myself. I am no longer afraid to be me.

I try to be kinder and gentler with myself, my children and all those in the world around me. I try to forgive because denying myself forgiveness for my mistakes, and the mistakes of others, draws the darkness in, bringing the black hole closer.  I want to wait for the tunnel to lead me somewhere. And I don’t want to get there any sooner than necessary.

 

by

Characters…

Another early post in my week of re-blogs.

A Writer's Life

I have characters who have lived in me since before I can remember.  They were my invisible friends when I was a child and as I grew, they grew also; changed in small ways like taking on a new name (depending on the crush of the month), new features or a different color hair.  As I tumbled into my teen years, I couldn’t understand why these people were inside me.  Was I going crazy?  Was this what multi-personalities felt like?

Any yet I knew who they were and they knew me.  We lived separate and yet connected lives.  I knew what they ate for breakfast, what they liked, what scared them in the dark, who they loved and hated.  Were we all the same person or was I somehow touching souls who were me but not me – souls in the thousands of parallel universes lined up like pages in a book?  Past lives? …

View original post 533 more words